With Heroes and Castles, what’s not to like? Foursaken Media’s attack and defend game for iPhone and iPad tasks you with protecting a fortress from skeletons, goblins, and orcs, hacking the suckers to death while strengthening your keep. Meanwhile, you can recruit a variety of warriors to the battlefield. Before long, the area’s flooded with archers and pikemen. Great game, but don’t expect it to be a cakewalk.

What’s Hot

We really dig the Lord of the Rings vibe. There’s a sort of Return of the King feel to the experience, as you struggle to prevent the horde from breaching the castle walls. Meanwhile, the game has three playable characters with signature abilities. The Knight is highly durable, the Paladin boosts the overall strength of allies, and the Engineer punishes baddies with a slow-firing cannon, should you prefer a ranged weapon to a sword.

Not only can you upgrade these heroes, but also allies, making them more effective killing machines. What ensues is traditional hack-and-slash mixed with tower defense, as you micromanage units while dodging arrows and cracking skulls.

On top of that, the game comes with multiplayer, just in case you prefer to tackle monsters co-operatively with a friend. A word of warning: Heroes and Castles is one of the more difficult action games. The engine is capable of pushing numerous units on screen at once, and attacks literally come from all sides. Die, and you’ll restart the mission from the beginning.

What’s Not

There’s something off about the combat, where striking enemies with cold hard steel doesn’t have the necessary weight behind it. As a result, you don’t “feel” the impact of blade on bone.

The Verdict: Not In Our House

Heroes and Castles is a quality game that’ll no doubt get better in the coming months, as the developers add new modes and make tweaks behind the scenes. For now, though, it offers plenty of action and strategy to satisfy fans of both genres.